Britain Has First Coal-Free Week In Over A Century

Britain, the birth place of coal power, has gone seven days without electricity from coal-fired stations for the first time since its 19th century industrial revolution, the country’s power grid operator said on Wednesday.

Britain was home to the world’s first coal-fuelled power plant in the 1880s, and coal was its dominant electric source and a major economic driver for the next century.

However, coal plants emit almost double the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) - a heat-trapping gas blamed for global warming - as gas-fired power plants, and were moved out of Britain’s cities from the late 1950’s to reduce air pollution.
